People: Dec. 8, 1997

PIPPEN FLIPPIN’?

If Dennis Rodman represents the id and Michael Jordan symbolizes the superego, then is the third part of the Bulls’ personality–the one that SCOTTIE PIPPEN stands for–the stupid? Pippen, whom Jordan has fought to keep on his team, wants to be traded. Long a hothead (remember how he refused to enter the last 1.8 sec. of a tied play-off game because the final play didn’t give him the ball?), Pippen is now hinting that his foot injury, which has kept him out all year, isn’t really that bad. Claiming he is “grossly underpaid,” Pippen says he’d like to go to either the Los Angeles Lakers or the Phoenix Suns. The Phoenix Suns? Beam yourself back up, Scottie.

FEUD OF THE WEEK

SALMAN (“DON’T GIVE OUT MY ROOM NUMBER”) RUSHDIE AGE: 50 OCCUPATION: Long-winded novelist BEST PUNCH: In the Guardian, Rushdie, still upset that Le Carre wondered if stores shouldn’t carry his book for fear of bombings, called him “an illiterate pompous ass.”

JOHN (“I MISS THE COLD WAR”) LE CARRE AGE: 66 OCCUPATION: Snooty spy novelist BEST PUNCH: Le Carre, who originally wrote the Guardian to defend himself against anti-Semitism charges, retorted that Rushdie was “self-canonizing” and “arrogant.”

The Winner: Rushdie. His letters were much better written

Q&A

LESLIE NIELSEN stars as Mr. Magoo in the upcoming Mr. Magoo.

Q: Magoo is a vegetable canning magnate. Did you spend time at a vegetable cannery for the part?

A: No. But I did a lot of work on becoming a magnate. I cleaned every kind of metal object off my body so often, I got very tired of it.

Q: Are there cartoon movies you wouldn’t do?

A: You never know what you wouldn’t do until someone asks you.

Q: Hector Heathcote?

A: Hector who?

Q: Magilla Gorilla?

A: Yeah, Gorilla I remember.

Q: So you’d do it?

A: If the cartoon was being used for pornography or hate messages, then I would never do it, of course.

Q: So maybe Magilla?

A: Maybe Magilla.

Q: Any more Naked Guns in the future?

A: We are chitchatting about that now. I think somewhere down the line something is going to happen where we’ll get at least one more.

Q: Could you use O.J.?

A: I really don’t think so. That would be a studio decision. O.J. is not really associated with comedy.

Q: Not anymore.

A: From a business point of view, the studio may feel they’d be liable to lose more of the audience than gain them. O.J. has moved into a different niche.

Q: You did Disney’s The Swamp Fox. Do you remember the theme song?

A: [Singing] Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox, riding through the glen. Hoo doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo. Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox, ha da da da da. He runs away to fight again. [Stops] Of course I remember it.

Q: In Nuts, Barbra Streisand saw you in your underwear.

A: There you are.

Q: You think she thinks about that when she’s with James Brolin?

A: I really can’t speak for Barbra, but it would be difficult for me to surmise she doesn’t have some sort of memory.

Q: I think about it a lot.

A: And you weren’t even there.

THEY’LL GET UP AGAIN

Now that British pop group Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping has shot up the charts to No. 6, one has to ask: Just how far can a really silly name take you? Not so far. In fact, internal rhyme and assonance have long been a trademark of one-hit wonders. A look back suggests that Chumbawamba has just one hit left in them.

BAND NAME TOP 10 HITS

Scritti Politti 1 Kajagoogoo 1 Bananarama 0 Oingo Boingo 5 Milli Vanilli 3 Blues Magoos 1 AVERAGE 1.8

JUSTICE RIVERA?

Not that many people watch CNBC, but luckily for GERALDO RIVERA, most of them seem to work for NBC. Rivera, 54, who has resurrected his career more times than Tony Danza, signed a major deal with the parent station that very well might re-re-re-establish him as a serious journalist. He’ll be dropping the declasse Geraldo Rivera Show to concentrate on gigs like his appearances as “legal commentator” on Today and four new prime-time specials focusing on the law. Rivera, who has a law degree, says the shows will be “legal with a healthy dose of street mixed in.” Why not? In fact, why not make Geraldo an anchor? “I think the anchor role will evolve in the next millennium. It will be less elevated, center-desk, O.K.-kids-tell-me-what-happened and more of an anchorman as a reporter,” he says.

THE FIRST FROSH

The end of college-football season brings classic rivalries and of course bonfires, pep rallies and death threats against the President’s daughter. Berkeley, long thought of as a peacenik kind of place, got medieval last week as the Big Game, the yearly clash with Stanford, turned ugly. Daily Californian columnist Guy Branum printed the name of CHELSEA CLINTON’S dorm and told his fellow Berkeley students to “show your spirit on Chelsea’s bloodied carcass.” Go, team! The Secret Service, however, didn’t find those words so inspiring and instead bum-rushed Branum’s dorm while they were in town for a Hillary Clinton speaking engagement. Agent Chris Van Holt showed up on campus to check Branum’s medical records and search his room–and the spunky undergrad taped the entire proceeding. “I want to make sure you don’t have any weapons or any of the stuff that you see on TV…like a big picture of Chelsea with a big X in blood,” said Van Holt, who had studied Branum’s past writings. He even brought some of them up: “Sexual Predator in Chief? Isn’t that a low blow?” In the end, Branum was let go with a gentle warning. Meanwhile, Stanford won the game but lost a goalpost to a swarm of Cal students in a postgame melee.

BLEEPS, BLOOPERS AND ART

The stammering, crazed, speed-talking Hollywood producer DUSTIN HOFFMAN, left, portrays in the upcoming Wag the Dog looks oddly familiar. He not only uncannily resembles Bob Evans, he even more uncannily resembles the goofy portrayal of Bob Evans that Hoffman did as a goof while filming 1976’s Marathon Man. The infamous improv scenes, which have been enjoyed in a few select home screening rooms throughout Hollywood, show Hoffman, right, in a bathrobe with slicked-back hair, big glasses, a stammer and a filthy mouth, pretending he is a ruined, emasculated Evans in 1996. And the President in 1996, according to Hoffman-as-Evans? Warren Beatty.